How To Write An Argumentative Essay On Candide

Darrius Jackson
Professor Origill
Western Civilization
11/19/2014

Voltaire's wrote Candide to show his view on how society and class, religion, warfare, and the idea of progress. Voltaire was a deist and he believed in religious equality, he wrote Candide to attack all aspects of its social structure by satirizing religion, society and social order by showing his hypocrisy. Voltaire was a prominent figure during the enlightenment era. Although he was not a typical enlightenment writer at his time because he wrote about issues including social freedom, religious inequality and civil liberty that other philosophers did not at the time. Voltaire's outspoken opinions made him very unpopular and landed him in jail but that did not stop him from

He felt that the social order of humanity was all wrong and thought that people where living life backwards as a society. He satirizes the people of all social status, especially those of higher social class who abused their power.With him speaking out against society and his negative opinions about social order, he preached that their should be freedom.For example in Candide he was having a conversation with two men of the military "Oh, sir," said one of the blues to him, "people of your appearance and of your merit never pay anything" (Voltaire pg.8). The two men of the military showed that by having a certain social status that you will not have anything to pay for, but at the same time the men where poking fun at him about his height. Another example of Voltaire mocking the social status was in Candide he said that his mother would rather raise him as a single mother than marry any man with a bad social status. That showed that women looked to marry men of high social class so that their family would be a higher status in society. Voltaire advocated that society should be equal with nobody looking over another person because of social